More knitting happen by way of a Magpie Tendency by Skeinanigans. I was curious about how much I would like a lightweight t-shirt style garment and love that the pattern looks awesome with variegated hand dyed yarns.
How freakin' cute are Snowball Buddies by Susan Claudino. This was a one day project that I used some scrap yarn to make, I even had polyester filling and safety eyes on hand already!
Since knitting and glass obviously go hand-in-hand... ok, yeah, not so much... it turns out that cutting glass, as a beginner, creates tiny cuts at the tips of every finger. Just slices a teeny bit, enough to essentially turn hands into little cacti, so that yarn no longer slides effortlessly along the fingers, but gets snagged on every other stitch and causes the plies of the yarn to come apart. I tried all the lotions and even an overnight Vaseline, but the yarn still snagged. I had the thought that nail filing down the skin around these cuts might be akin to sanding wood to as smooth as a marble, but no, it didn't smooth the tips of my fingers at all and just kind of hurt.
Here we have a little marriage of my hobbies. I made a glass replica of Gnorman, because I thought he looked lonely. And using some highly contrasting streaky glass, I made some socks that remind me of hand dyed socks.
There is something outrageously fun about putting together colours with plans to bring a little creature to life. I knit Gnome De Plume by Sarah Schira and had a blast doing it. This surprised me because I don't usually enjoy knitting tiny but for some reason, knitting little i-cords and doing a teeny little colour change didn't bother me because I knew they were Gnorman's little arms and hands. And blocking his little beard! I mean, I can't handle it. This is apparently a spectacular way to use up yarn scraps.
After hitting up Michael's to experiment with some Wool Ease Thick & Quick, I cast on and knit up the Winston Pullover by Jane Richmond. The yarn called for in this pattern is a super bulky weight 80% Acrylic, 20% Wool blend that is extremely economical and there was something nice about that. This sweater thick and warm and will be perfect for those days when layering up to combat Winter chill is non-optional.
This month, I also took a leap and learned how to cut, solder and make a suncatcher with stained glass. Unfortunately, this did require a larger investment and I found it disappointing that there are no stores that sell these supplies anywhere even remotely close to me. I had to order everything online, even the sheets of coloured glass, which I would have preferred to have look at in person, because stained glass is similar to knitting in that every sheet multi-coloured sheet is completely unique, not unlike hand dyed yarn.
